For more than three decades, the continued miniaturization of silicon metal oxide semiconductor field effect transistors (MOSFETs) has driven the worldwide semiconductor industry. Various showstoppers to continue scaling have been predicated for decades, but a history of innovation has sustained Moore's Law in spite of many challenges. However, there are growing signs today that metal oxide semiconductor transistors are beginning to reach their traditional scaling limits.
Since it has become increasingly difficult to improve MOSFETs and therefore CMOS performance through continued scaling, methods for improving performance without scaling have become critical. One approach for doing this is to increase carrier (electron and/or hole) mobilities. Increased carrier mobility can be obtained, for example, by introducing the appropriate stress/strain into the semiconductor lattice.
The application of stress changes the lattice dimensions of the semiconductor substrate. By changing the lattice dimensions, the electronic band structure of the material is changed as well. The change may only be slight in intrinsic semiconductors resulting in only a small change in resistance, but when the semiconducting material is doped, i.e., n-type, and partially ionized, a very small change in the energy bands can cause a large percentage change in the energy difference between the impurity levels and the band edge. This results in changes in carrier transport properties, which can be dramatic in certain cases. The application of physical stress (tensile or compressive) can be further used to enhance the performance of devices fabricated on the semiconductor substrates.
Compressive strain along the device channel increases drive current in p-type field effect transistors (pFETs) and decreases drive current in n-type field effect transistors (nFETs). Tensile strain along the device channel increases drive current in nFETs and decreases drive current in pFETs.
Stress can be introduced into a single crystal oriented substrate by several methods including, for example, forming a stress liner on top of the substrate and around the gate region. Depending on the conductivity type of the FET (i.e., p or n), the stress liner can be under tensile stress (preferred for nFETs) or compressive stress (preferred for pFETs).
When nFETs and pFETs are integrated onto the same semiconductor substrate, dual stress liner technology is typically used in which a first stress liner under tensile stress is formed around each nFET, while a second stress liner under compressive stress is formed around each pFET. In such technologies, the stress liners are formed one on top of another without the need to etch the tensile stressed liner for the nFETs.
In the prior art, Si3N4 is typically used as the stress inducing material. Si3N4 is also used as a barrier layer to block ionic metal diffusion from metallic interconnects into the substrate.
Despite the above uses, Si3N4 has a dielectric constant (k) of about 7.0. Moreover, a Si3N4 stress liner, which has a deposited thickness of about 100 nm or greater, significantly increases the capacitance between neighboring transistor gates and between contacts and transistor gates.
As such, a new and improved stress liner is needed for CMOS devices that have a low dielectric constant k (on the order of less than 4.0). The use of such a low k stress liner will reduce the parasitic capacitance in the device thereby improving the performance of the device.